


A Mother's Love

by SociopathicArchangel



Series: 25 Lives [4]
Category: Don't Hug Me I'm Scared (Short Film)
Genre: 25 lives AU, Doris - Freeform, Gen, Lust, Pride, ice hell, non chrono, there's so much foreshadowing for afot in here it'd be crazy to miss it
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-23
Updated: 2015-04-23
Packaged: 2018-03-25 09:05:25
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,163
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3804679
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SociopathicArchangel/pseuds/SociopathicArchangel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The best stories are love stories.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Mother's Love

_The best stories are love stories. For God so loved the world, for Romeo so loved Juliet, for a master so loved a pet. It doesn’t have to be romantic. There are different kinds of love._

* * *

 

His birth is rare, but not entirely unheard of. Nobody can remember the last time this was done. It’s been more than a hundred thousand years, and the ones who did choose this path weren’t so accepted by the rest of the Family with open arms. To Fall was to stoop low, be stripped of everything that made them special and supreme over the mortals, to be a disgrace to their kind. To Fall was a coward’s way out of responsibility.

Love is not a coward; at least, she doesn’t think so. She also doesn’t think that mortality is something to be considered weak. In fact, she thinks the ones who deal with it are very strong. How do they wake up every morning and strive for their happiness, knowing that anytime, it could be taken away from them forever when Death came calling?

So she doesn’t mind the stares of the others when she announces her decision to step down from her position as Love. Or, in their terms, to Fall.

But she fears for the child. Whenever one of them Fell, a child would be born, created from a fragment of their souls and woven into the fabric of Space and Time, with all of their abilities passed on to them, so that someone would govern the concept that they held in their place. Most of the time, the Successors aren’t very welcome either. ‘Poor imitations’ and ‘Second-hand stand-ins’, they were called.

They were expected to never be as good as their predecessors. To never be good at all, because they were born from a coward, so they shall be as disgusting as their ancestor.

When the star explodes into birth, Love watches as the child’s physical form finishes completion. Here’s her chance to prepare this one for the world ahead of him – a century with her abilities left until they completely leave and cross over to him. A Concept’s abilities are woven into their very core, their soul, and ripping it all out at once could prove fatal for everyone involved. It’s a slow process, taking out something that’s a very important part of you to transfer it to another to hold. Successors are mortal before they mature, but they don’t get sick or hungry. They’re like mini-Concepts, but can expire.

Once he completes metamorphosis, she’ll be as weak as a human, but not mortal. The Voices never granted the Fallen mortality.

“Love,” she says. It is not her name any longer. She is no longer a Concept. Even now, she can feel her power slowly ebbing away from her on an atomic scale, seeping into her child and successor’s soul.

Her child.

Her Child.

She smiles and prays that this young one will not have to live through the harshness of their world with her around. She mentally thanks the Voices for their decision to not grant the Fallen mortality, because that meant they could always watch over their children from afar.

*

Finding a new identity is easy. That came with being a Fallen, arranged by the Voices. Until she’s completely powerless, she’s able to cross over their world and to many others, but she thinks that raising a child to take her place as Love would be best done on Earth: a lovely planet that was the human world.

Humans were interesting, and for all they were capable of – hate, lust, death, life – they were capable of a very great love. Humans were created out of love, all for love, to love. If there was anywhere love thrived, it was there.

She flips open the name almanac she found on another continent to a random page and agrees to herself that the first name she sees would be her name now.

The page opens to the D section. Doris.

Not bad.

Their house is in a small town with a friendly neighborhood. The neighbors are generous and nice, the weather isn’t so bad, and there are plenty of human children to play with should her child ever get bored.

His name is Shrignold.

It turns out, raising a Successor is very different from raising a human child. For starters, human children looked like they had to be raised from scratch. You had to let them know who they were, what they were, feed them, put them to sleep if they got tired, give them baths, teach them how to walk, how to talk, how to read, how to write and how to behave.

Shrignold did not need to eat nor did he need to sleep. None of their kind did. He didn’t really need a bath, they never really got dirty either (unless they deliberately tromped into the mud or something). The child knew how to talk and write in _their_ language(s), as well as the basic gist of who he was and what he was. He was born out of a piece of her soul, everything about their kind was hard-wired into his being.

The only things she really had to teach him were how to walk and how to behave.

Shrignold sucks at walking.

Most of the time, he’s rolling all over the floor, which she finds dangerous and unsanitary. He doesn’t crawl either.

Sometimes he looks up at her wings and then tries to crane his neck to look at his back if he has the same appendages so that he can fly. Doris laughs, gently picks him off the floor and sets him in her lap. He looks like an eighth-month old human child like this.

Shrignold makes grabbing motions at her wings. _“You’re not going to grow wings for a while, Shrig,”_ she says. The child – Infant? Baby? Can their race have terms like those? – pouts and gives the semi-transparent wings one last glance before looking up at her.

 _“When?”_ he asks.

 _“I don’t know,”_ Doris flaps them rapidly for a moment. Shrignold makes a delighted noise over the buzzing sound. Doris smiles sadly as she looks at her beautiful wings, a semi-opaque yellow with pink, blue and green patterns that glistened when hit by the light at just the right angle, _“I’m going to miss them.”_

The child sobers up immediately and slowly extends an arm towards her. His small hand touches her cheek. Doris thinks he’s about to cry. She plants a kiss to his forehead, “ _It’ll be fine, pash,”_ she says, “ _Just take care of them for me, okay?”_

Shrignold beams, _“Yes, Ah-mah.”_

They don’t give up with the walking lessons. Shrignold surprises her one day when he waddles from his bed and goes to her to wake her up one morning. It’s the best thing to ever wake up to. He gets confused when she starts crying and panics a bit though.

He’s a very bright child, to her delight. Teaching him Latin was a breeze and very soon he was reading books and having conversations with the other children of the neighborhood. He had a bit of a bump there though. Children his age, as he was about three human years old, have no idea how to discuss philosophy. Eventually, he caught the attention of the older kids and some adults and it was smooth sailing from there.

They move on to Italian and Greek and he takes both languages in stride as well. On his fourth birthday, she flies him to Greece and they stay there for a few weeks.

He’s hailed by the town as a boy genius, praising her for her skills of raising her child and brushing off why she never sends him to school with the reason that it would be too limiting with an intellect as fast-developing as his. Doris smiles, bows and thanks them. She tells Shrignold to never tell them anything about what they really are. He’s obedient.

Eventually, Pompeii is destroyed by a volcanic eruption and they have to move. Although Shrignold understands what death is, it doesn’t make it any easier for him to deal with his sudden loss. All of the friends he had made and played with were gone. He’s five.

It’s not easy on Doris’ part either. One moment, she was waiting for Shrignold to get home and the next, the earth is rumbling and there’s screaming outside. She was barely able to let her wings shift to the corporeal plane and fly, zipping through the air in search of her child.

She found him nearly crushed by an overturned stall in the marketplace, eyes damp and wide with fear.

They find a new place to live in but don’t stay for a year when the townspeople accuse them as evil monsters and threaten to kill them.

Shrignold shivers in his mother’s arms as they trek through the forest. Doris has been flying for miles, and with majority of her energy to manipulate her wings already in her son, her flights get

shorter and shorter. Also, her little boy is asleep and she doesn’t want the buzzing to wake him up. He’s been through a lot for a past week.

He couldn’t go out in the streets without being thrown stones at, and he never told her how many bruises he’d gotten until he accidentally fell down the stairs when his already injured knee buckled under him and she found out exactly how battered he was. One time someone nearly ran a sword through him, yelling ‘demon child’. Then just today, their house got set on fire and he was the one who got his mother out of the smoke-filled kitchen.

Doris is ashamed of that. She was supposed to be the one taking care of him and yet she let herself be almost flattened by a piece of wood and her son dragged her out of the house until she could fly them out of town.

Her little boy was so strong. She let a proud smile grace her face as she pressed a soft kiss to his forehead, “Never be afraid, my little _pash._ ”

It’s living in the shadows after that. They never stayed in the same town anymore, only a maximum of three days until they moved on. They turn into pilgrims, until eventually, legends. Wandering demons, people  would say. A mother and a child. They can know everything about you in one look, can put you under a hypnotizing gaze, and if you stray too close, tear your flesh from your bones. The mother can fly and snatch your children if you’re not careful.

Of course, she doesn’t expect the legends to be even sane. The hypnotizing gaze comes with the Concepts’ normal elegant and attention-catching disposition. The only child Doris has ever snatched is her own son, and that was when he was in trouble.

They manage. She continues to teach him the languages of the world, and whenever a new one came up, both of them learned it together. Whenever they’re on a high hill with banana plants and it’s raining, they rip off one huge leaf and Shrignold sits on her lap as she places both of them down on the leaf. They lean forward and slide down the hill, careful to maneuver out of the way of boulders and plants, screaming with thrill the entire way down.

Shrignold likes to sit on her shoulders when they travel at night. He says that her eyes are like built-in candles to her head. Headlights, he’d say. He can only produce a small glow from his own eyes so far.

On his seventh birthday, he convinces her that they should just spend the evening in that open field near the town they’re staying. The sky is clear and the air is comfortably cold.

After he finally wins the argument that they don’t get sick, they’re lying down on the grass and staring up at the stars while Doris traces constellation patterns and tells him stories of home. Her home.

“Can I go there?”

Doris blinks and turns to him, “Go where?”

“Your home.”

Pain flickers on her face for a moment and she quickly schools her expression. Shrignold catches it though, “Not that I really want to, it’s fine if – ”

She waves a hand, “It’s okay.” Shrignold shuts his mouth and waits. She sighs, “Honestly, I don’t know, _pash._ ”

His forehead crinkles.

“I’ll have a few years left with enough energy to cross realms but,” she pauses. When she continues, her voice is almost a whisper, “They’re not very friendly towards Successors.”

He frowns, “But aren’t we just like them? Just…born differently?”

Doris sits up, takes a deep breath and loudly exhales, “Well,” it’s now or never, “Concepts, see, are creatures of heavy irony. We’re the personifications of human conglomerations of thoughts that are relative, things that don’t follow a specific pattern of rules and are fluid.”

Shrignold nods. They’ve talked about what and who they are so many times, that if the words weren’t already seared into their cores from birth, it would have been.

“But the Concepts themselves don’t like to break from the ordinary, they don’t like breaking ‘rules’. Like how we are all just born,” she says, “If something disrupts that order, like the birth of a Successor – someone who was _weaved_ from an existing Concept’s soul and out of the fabric of Space and Time – they don’t react well.”

Shrignold keeps quiet, but the way his frown deepens betrays his confusion. “Most people don’t like different. Most people don’t like change,” Doris says.

“I thought they believed themselves to be better than people.”

She snorts, “That they do.”

They don’t speak for hours after that. Doris lies back down on the grass and they watch as evening bleeds into hues of orange and pink before getting up. It’s time to leave town again.

Shrignold yawns as he gets to his feet, _“Ah-mah?”_

“Hmm?”

“I don’t think I want to go visit your home anymore if they’re all like that. They can suck it up their pompous asses – ”

“Shrignold.”

“Sorry. They can suck it up that we exist, and that there’s nothing they can do about it.”

The boy puffs up his chest like a proud bird. Doris kneels down to his eye level, ruffles his hair and kisses him on the forehead, “There’s my brave little _pash._ ”

*

The day Shrignold groans and doesn’t get out of bed, Doris is both curious and terrified. They never got sick, not even Successors as children.

She feeds him chicken soup like the humans do whenever their kids got sick. She doesn’t know the protocol for this. Nourishment wasn’t something they needed to take in but with a sick child, she could never be too sure.

Shrignold eagerly devours the entire bowl just to stave off the lack of taste in his mouth.

Then he rolls over on his back, yelps and falls off of the bed. Doris quickly sets him in her lap, facing down the floor. He groans again.

She looks over the bed but there’s nothing poking out that would hurt him.

“Shrig, what hurts?”

“My back,” he whimpers, “It’s like someone stabbed needles into it.”

Gently, she pulls off his shirt from him and there are the culprits of her son’s pain. Two semi-transparent slits that are poking out his back, laced with rainbow patterns that glistened at just the right angle of light.

Wing nubs.

Her breath gets caught in her throat.

He tries to move, “What? What is it?”

“You’re growing wings.”

“…what?”

“You’re growing wings, Shrig.”

Shrignold quickly sits up and tries to bend his arms to that he could feel the nubs poking out his back. He pokes the muscle near them and hisses in pain. He withdraws his hand and turns to his mother, eyes wide with excitement.

Doris’ jaw has been unhinged for a few seconds, “You’re growing _wings._ ”

“I know.”

“You’re going to be flying soon, _pash!_ ”

“I know!”

She scoops him off the ground and spins him around the room, their laughter echoing throughout the inn they’re staying in. When they’re both dizzy and she sets him on the ground, Shrignold wraps his arms around her neck and nuzzles his face into her hair.

Doris freezes.

“Thanks…mom,” he says. Then he pulls away and clicks his tongue, “Nah, I like _Ah-mah_ better.”

The former concept of Love giggles and hugs her son back, careful not to disturb the wing nubs on his back, “Thank you too, _pash._ ”

They stay in the town longer than intended. Doris knows that they’re risking it, but she would rather take her chances in a place that might be very superstitious than walking in the cold night with a weak child on her back. Besides, the people might shrug off the notions of them being monsters if they see that her little nine-year-old can get sick. She’s also long since practiced hiding her wings from the physical plane, but that’s never worked before, especially with her glowing eyes, so she can’t trust that bit of concealment.

Two months later, Shrignold’s wings are fully grown – thin, bright yellow strips of physical manifestations of energy patterned with pink, blue and green. They resembled hers in a way, except she had more blue than pink.

The first thing she teaches him is how to make them shift from one plane to another, together with the packaged pair of antennas he’d grown along with his wings. It’s hilariously disastrous. Since planes overlap all the time (but humans can only interact with a limited number of them), there’s no danger of things being severed or transported away from them. Manipulating these overlaps, however, was the tricky part.

On their first lesson, Shrignold couldn’t be seen by any of the humans, but he could still touch and bump into things. His mother put him back on the visual plane before they could start up rumors of a ghost. Then one time, he spent several hours with the lower half of his body invisible. Another time, it was his head. And on another, he was so far into one plane that everything he said was a booming voice across the neighborhood even if he was only whispering. The people started saying that the new tenants of the inn were cursed, because all of this weird stuff had started when they stayed here.

They’re lucky that Shrignold’s a natural at flying, even if his calculation of distance is off sometimes. He’s able to flap his wings and adjust his speed easily. The only problem is that he keeps on hitting the ceiling or crashing into things.

It’s useful when they get chased out of the town. Both of them, mother and son, flying at top speed while they laugh at the horrified looks of the townspeople as they leave. Doris never lets go of her son’s hand. Shrignold squeezes his mother’s hand tighter.

If Doris notices that her wings feel a bit weaker, she shrugs it off and continues to fly. She’ll focus on this for now. On this moment. When both of them can fly and her son is happy.

*

Doris trusts Shrignold a lot. He’s already twelve, a smart kid, he’s got enough of her in him to pull out all stops and defend himself should the need arise and he knows exactly how much she worries about him that he never gets home past dark.

It’s already dark.

But then again, it’s just been a few minutes since the sun has set. Even the most obedient of all children can have a few slip ups sometimes, especially when there are circumstances out of their control. That doesn’t stop her from checking out of the window every now and then.

She yawns, then frowns. It’s still early but she’s already feeling tired. She’s been feeling weaker lately. Ever since Shrignold’s wings have grown years ago, the transfer of her abilities to him has gone

faster. Doris has started needing sleep and Shrignold frets over her, saying that they should probably start finding a permanent place, but she waves him off and tells him that she still has seventy eight years of non-human life left and she doesn’t plan on being a drag on their world tour.

Besides, it’s _her_ job to worry over _him_. Not the other way around.

Even if last week she spotted a lock of silver in her hair. She managed to hide it. If Shrignold saw it, he’d fuss for hours.

She dozes off by the kitchen table and hopes that the sound of the door opening will wake her up soon.

*

She does wake up, but it’s not to the sound of the door opening. It’s not to any sound at all. All of her drowsiness evaporates when she sees that it’s almost midnight and Shrignold still isn’t home.

Doris doesn’t bother grabbing her coat and runs out of the inn, eyes combing the near-empty streets for any sign of that familiar yellow scarf she got for him for his tenth birthday. There’s nothing like that. She asks the occasional bystander she passes by but they haven’t seen Shrignold either.

She finally finds one, a drunk man, saying that he was headed back to their inn when someone grabbed Shrignold and suddenly disappeared into thin air. Then again, he was also probably drunk.

Doris pales and her stomach churns, turning hot and buzzing.

Somebody has Shrignold.

Somebody who is most likely from back home.

She screams his name at the top of her lungs as she races down the streets and even going as far as the forest ahead of the town. Her bare feet are bleeding from the rocks and sticks she’s stepped on and she’ll freeze out here, but somebody has Shrignold and she wants him back.

 _“Shrignold!”_ birds fly in flocks in the middle of the night at the shrill cry of her voice. Doris’ knees are shaking, she doesn’t stop running. _“Shrignold!”_

A root catches her foot and she trips, landing face-first on the ground and hitting her forehead on a rock. The dark of the forest bursts in stars. Doris groans, _“Pash…”_

She pushes herself up by her arms and slips. Her arm gets bent in a painful angle and she grits her teeth. Her head hits the ground again as her arm surrenders, “Shrignold…”

She raises her eyes upward. The last thing she sees is the moon peeking through the dark leaves before everything goes black.

The last thing she thinks is that the moon seemed to be smugly smirking.

*

He doesn’t know where he is. All he knows is that it hurts, he wants to get home, his mother is probably worried and that he can’t move.

Shrignold blinks his eyes rapidly as the light from his eyes flicker from his panic. He has to get out of here. And to do that, he has to stay calm.

The man in front of him chuckles.

Shrignold knows that it’s not a man, because he still hasn’t really mastered the manipulation of planes yet and he can see everything that the man is trying to conceal – all the horrible number of eyes and bloody claws. Shrignold wishes he did know how to cover all of those from his sight, because they’re utterly disturbing.

When the man starts speaking to his friends in the first language Shrignold has known, that’s all the boy needs to confirm that these are indeed, blood and flesh Concepts. The real deals. Not second-hand Successors like him. Real deals who hated those who were like him.

The boy squirms in the bonds that are keeping him immobile and pinned to the wall. The sigils glow blue and burn his wrists and ankles when he moves. He bites down his lip to keep from screaming.

The man chuckles, _“You know, I never did understand why humans use their contraptions than all of this,”_ he motions to the symbols behind the boy’s back and the ones carved into his skin. Shrignold glares at him. He grins, _“Got some bite, don’t you? That’s a surprise. Most of you halflings always follow in the footsteps of your ‘parents’. I expected you to be more like Love. Useless, cowardly – ”_

_“You **shut up!** ”_

The candles’ flames in the room flicker blue before they suddenly burst in size and the wax of the sticks explode into a thousand scalding drops that splatter all over the walls and the floor, leaving only Shrignold’s eyes as the source of light. One of the man’s friends is holding a candelabra and the exploding wax gets all over his face and into his eyes. He drops the object and claws at his face, hands pulling away when they come in contact with the hot wax but still scratching at its direction as he screams.

The first man chuckles, _“Oh, reel it in, Anger, it’s candle wax.”_

 _“Try getting it all over your fucking eyes!”_ Anger screeches as his nails dig into his skin, peeling off bits of flesh like bloody cheese shavings.

 _“This one’s strong, isn’t it?”_ the other one says.

Their leader turns back to Shrignold. _“They’re always so strong since they don’t know how to keep all of their essence in yet,”_ he laughs _, “But that makes it more fun. Let’s see how much of that power can keep them from hurting. There’s a lot more candles in the drawer, Doubt.”_

He pulls out a small thin blade and walks closer until he’s by Shrignold’s stretched out right arm while Doubt sets to work and relights the room again. The boy tries to lean back to put more distance between him and the stranger in vain.

The blade lightly sinks into his skin before the man drags it slowly. The skin from his arm starts to peel off as the blade moves, blood easing out of the corner of the open flesh.

Shrignold screams. The windows in the room crack before shattering. Anger crawls away from the noise. Doubt chuckles, _“This one has a lot more juice than normal, Pride.”_

 _“He’s older,”_ Pride says over the boy’s screams as the blade continues to take off the skin from his forearm to his hand. The peeled skin is dangling like a sheet of paper and dripping blood, _“And he’s Love’s child. She’s…the oldest of us.”_ Pride makes a face in disgust and in the midst of the pain, Shrignold can feel just a spark of pride for his mother.

When the man notices the smug smirk on his face, he swiftly whips the blade upward, peeling the skin off completely and shaving off the skin of Shrignold’s hand near the pinky. The boy hisses. There’s a wet slap on the floor when thin layer of bloody skin hits it.

Pride grabs a handful of Shrignold’s hair and slams the boy’s head back against the wall. Shrignold’s ears ring and everything goes blurry.

_“Don’t think that precious little Love can save you now, boy.”_

*

It’s a miracle that Doris even wakes up the next day. She stumbles out of the forest in the early dawn, feet covered in dirty scabs and some of her wounds were open and bleeding from walking. There are dark lines under her eyes and her skin is pale and half-frozen. Her arm hurts. She’s muttering her son’s name until the rest of the trees disappears and the village is in sight.

Doris stops.

She stands there for a few seconds before she drops to her knees, ignoring the pain that erupts when her kneecap hits stones and draw blood. She hangs her head and stares at the ground. Small trails of dark red from her knees push through the dust of the earth and she traces them with her eyes.

She hasn’t stopped muttering Shrignold’s name for hours.

The sun rises. It hits her skin with warmth and she involuntarily relaxes.

Warm liquid pools at the edges of her eyes and start to crawl down her cheeks.

Her nose is nasally as she sniffs.

There’s a warm feeling inside her chest, like a fire about to burst to life. It festers for a few seconds before finally exploding. Doris’ eyes widen as all of her fatigue disappears into thin air. Her arm snaps back to its original position and stops hurting. She can feel the muscles in her feet spew out the beginnings of an infection and knit themselves together until they’re clean and unmarred. The blood and pain from her knees stop. Her eyes aren’t heavy anymore.

Something warm presses against her back and she can hear the faint sounds of slow fluttering before it comes to a stop. Doris raises her head, eyes wide and mouth parted in shock.

She hasn’t felt the weight of her wings in three years.

She twists around to get a good look at them, and they’re exactly how she remembers them. Yellow, with patterns of blue, pink and green.

The flood of unadulterated life and energy in her is the confirmation of her despair. She has it all again.

And her son is dead.

*

Doris flies nonstop for two days, screaming, crying, screeching and pleading at the top of her lungs. Give her son back. Strip everything away from her, _just give her Shrignold back, **please.**_

On the third day, she accidentally burns an entire city to the ground with the sheer force of her uncontrolled emotions, making all the candles burst and catch the curtains in the town. Within hours, the city is ashes.

The thing is, she could care less.

Parents are weeping, children are crying, lovers feel like wanting death.

That’s how she feels right now too, so who cares about how _they’re_ feeling. She knows what it feels like and nobody’s helping her.

In the back of her mind, she knows that she might be able to destroy this entire planet singlehandedly if she doesn’t get a grip on herself, but she _just does not care what the fuck happens to this piece of dirt floating in space._

Floods can be stopped easier than Love. Water can quench fire, but not Love.

Planet fucking Jupiter can crash to Earth and she would hurl it back to space if she could get her child back.

Rachel is weeping and refuses to be comforted for her child is dead.

How dare they. How **dare. They. He was her child and she stepped down voluntarily. He did not ask to be born, he didn’t deserve this.**

Doris clutches her head and drops to the ground and screams.

Somewhere in the East, mountains shake and the ocean reels back, before smashing full force against the islands and wiping out entire cities.

*

On the fifth, when she’s crying in the middle of a magma-buried town, someone approaches her.

Doris’ wings buzz as they rapidly move. Her hands are bleeding from clawing at her eyes so much that she’s torn some of her nails off. Her head snaps up. If those fuckers had come to kill her after they were done with her son then just they wait –

She stops. Stops breathing. Her eyes widen.

“…Lust?”

Her sister hangs her head, eyes to the ground with tears at the corner of her eyes. Her usually pristine dress is marred with red spots that are definitely not style. Doris’ line of vision moves to what she’s holding in her hands.

She chokes on a sob.

She’d known. Oh, she’d known from the moment she’d felt her wings return and still –

Doris rises to her feet and rushes to her sister, quickly taking the load off of Lust’s hands.

Her son’s mangled body is barely recognizable. Half of his face has been torn off and his jaw was missing. His tongue was cut, leaving a small stump that hung without the support of a jaw. His remaining eye is wide and frozen in fear. His left ear was cut off – no, more like pulled off, judging from the jagged edge of what was left of it. His arms are broken and his fingers are bent wrongly – all of the joints are bent way back and his hands are folded in half.

He is missing his left leg and his remaining leg is also twisted around. His stomach is open and empty. His yellow scarf is a tattered mess with crusted blood.

There is a huge hole in his chest and his heart is missing.

Tears drip down Doris’ chin and pelt her son’s lifeless face as she cradles him close to her chest. “My little baby,” she whispers, “My little _pash_ , I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry. I’m sorry I left you alone. I’m sorry, Shrignold, I’m so – ” she sniffs as she bows her head and presses her cheek to his hair. Her shoulders shake as she draws in another sharp breath and closes her eyes. She lets out a whimper, _“I’m so…sorry, baby. I’m sorry. You don’t deserve this.”_

She slowly sinks to the ground. She moves so that it’s her forehead on his hair this time. Doris’ entire body shudders as she loudly sniffs and screams, _“I’M SORRY, SHRIGNOLD! I’M SORRY!”_

Her tears seep into his hair. Some of it continues to trail down her face and mix with her saliva. She doesn’t care. She furiously shakes her head as she hunches over further _. “You don’t deserve this, I’m so sorry. I’m a horrible mother. How could I let this happen to you, pash, how could I be such an idiot. I should have known they wouldn’t leave us alone.”_

Shrignold’s body shakes with every shudder she makes when she sniffs. Doris holds him closer, _“Give him back to me. Give him back to me, please. He’s a child. He’s twelve. Please. PLEASE.”_

Lust watches as her sister nearly curls into a ball, holding her son’s corpse. She looks away as one tear starts to fall down her cheek.

*

Lust had known about their plan to kill her nephew, but with three of them fighting her and cheating with banishing sigils, she wasn’t able to stop them in time. Finding the corpse of her sister’s son was not something she had wanted to do.

But she did get names. Pride, Doubt and Anger. Puritan assholes.

That’s all Doris needs.

Love is the oldest of all Concepts, before creation was made, before anyone else was born, it was the Voices and her. The Voices didn’t really count as Concepts either. They were an entity to watch over all of them.

A very busy entity, unfortunately.

Still, Love is the oldest. She knows the tricks to getting around everywhere in the universe.

She strikes a deal with little Azrael and storms her home together with her sister, scouring the entire realm for the three people she wanted to skin alive. Not just skin alive. She wants to inflict all the pain they caused her son multiplied thousandfold and then she was going to kill them.

The entire realm is in the panicked frenzy. Lights are flickering, wormholes are opening up in random places and sucking people in, stars are going supernova prematurely and there’s a heavy beacon of death that has somehow entered the place.

Lust and Love, knowing that this commotion would be quick to reach the ears of the council, proceed to wipe the floor with anyone who tries to stop them.

“Where are they?”

Fear only manages to stutter and point to the direction of the meeting hall on the highest hill with the tip of the golden and silver blade at his throat. Love shoves him away and nods to her sister.

They move up until they reach the building of the meeting hall. Love doesn’t need to lay a hand on the heavy marble doors to open them. When she’s a few feet in front of them, an angry gust of wind blows past them and slams the doors open until they hit the walls with a **_bang!_** The marble cracks.

Pride looks up from his conversation with his friends and raises an eyebrow, “Hello, Lust…” his eyes trail to the woman glaring at him, “And Love, how nice to see you again.”

It’s not half a second when he gets the last syllable out when Love is suddenly across the room and has a claw at his neck. His back hits the wall loudly, bones breaking and eyes going wide, while Love’s nails dig into his throat. Pride grips her arm and chokes out, “W-what are you doing?”

“Fucking payback time, asshole,” she raises her other hand and pressed the edge of the blade to the man’s neck, drawing blood.

Pride’s eyes go wide, “A-a reaper’s – ”

“Not just a _reaper’s_ , Pride. Take a good look at it.”

Love grins smugly when he tries to look down further but can’t with the way she’s tilted his head back and cutting off his air. That paling skin is looking good on him. It’d be better cold.

Anger and Doubt whirl around to help him, but Lust is quick to chase after them and snap their necks. They drop down quickly.

“Now, we both know that won’t kill them,” Love says, “But this can.”

She presses the blade deeper. Pride makes panicked, grunting noises and scratches her arm. She doesn’t budge. “Boy, you have no idea what you have just done.”

Love grips the cold handle of the blade, power humming within the metal as she moves to behead him. Pride raises his hands, “W-wait! I can bring your son back!”

She stops.

Doris’ grip on his neck loosens.

“What?”

“I can bring your son back,” Pride wheezes. He takes in big gulps of air and tries to steady his breathing. The knife at his throat draws back a bit.

“You…you killed him, he’s…”

“I know how to bring him back to life.”

Lies. Lies, lies, lies. If there was anything anyone knew, it would be her, she was the one with the longest experience. So long that she had grown tired of it all. It was the reason Shrignold – stop, don’t cry, keep it together – was born in the first place.

The possibility…

Love resumes her death hold on him again, “You’re lying.”

“No! I swear!” he croaks. He moves a hand to his chest to remove the first few buttons of his shirt. Love watches as a small sphere of light rises out from the center of his collarbone and pulses when it floats near her hand.

She gasps. Slowly, she moves her weapon down and accidentally grazes the ball of light. It makes a small shrieking sound and flies away from it. Doris panics and lets Pride go, muttering an apology under her breath.

The man rubs his neck and coughs.

“You have a part of his soul with you,” Doris says. She looks up at him, horrified, “ _You tore his soul from his body and broke it apart!”_

“Not just me,” Pride says. Doris swallows thickly and turns back to look at the currently dead men at her sister’s feet.

“We’re not stupid, Love,” his voice is still croaky but he manages to carry a smug tone with it. The utter _ass_. If he didn’t have something so valuable with him, she would run him through and watch as he exploded into nothingness.

Doris grits her teeth and turns back to him. Pride smirks, “I understand you’ve been through a great tragedy.”

“Watch your tongue or I’ll throw everything out the window and kill you.”

He chuckles, “I know you won’t. But as I’ve said, you’ve been through a lot. You’ve lost your son – ”

_“Because you fucking killed him!”_

“ – and we have lost a valuable member of the Family. All of us have been through loss, and our emotions have just caused us to do horrible things.”

Lust curls her hands into fists until her nails draw blood from her palms, “Are you actually trying to justify yourself?!”

Pride raises a hand, “Ah, ah, ah, I’m not finished. We can still turn this situation around. For example, we can get Love back and I,” he turns to Doris, “Can give you your son back.”

He’s lying.

But what if he’s not.

Don’t hope.

Faith, Hope and Love. But the greatest of these…

“Go on,” Doris says. She doesn’t let go of the borrowed blade. Pride grins, “If you kill me, or any of us,” he motions towards Doubt and Anger, “You’re going to destroy the last remaining pieces of your son that exists. So that means, you’re not allowed to kill us.”

Doris’ glare deepens.

“You don’t tell the council anything and in return, we’ll cover up for you and your sister’s rampage and treachery of making business with a reaper,” his eyes trail down to the gold weapon in her hands that seemed to glow at that statement, “A very powerful not-so-much of a reaper, at that.”

“So I don’t kill you and I don’t tell the council you killed my child. You bring him back. Is that it?”

“With one more condition,” he says, “He doesn’t remember anything.”

“Of course he shouldn’t remember anything. Who would want to remember getting killed horribly?”

“Not just that, Love. I mean everything. From the fact that he had a mother until his very last memory. I’ll bring him back fully mature too, so there’s no holes to cover up with lies.”

Doris’ mouth snaps shut.

Lust gives a loud sound of disbelief from behind her. She’s shouting. Doris doesn’t hear her.

From the first time his eyes opened and met hers. From the first time he called her Ah-mah. From the first time he walked, to making friends, to getting wings, to that favorite yellow scarf of his, to all the songs and stories of home she’s taught and shared to him.

To him being Shrignold.

To her being mother.

To being a family.

“ – can you believe this guy?! Don’t listen to him, Love, I say you go talk to Azrael again and see if they can do something.”

Doris’ lip quivers. She whispers, “I’ve already tried.”

Lust hasn’t heard her and continues to shout profanities at the man. Pride, however, has. He grins, “Do you know why we hate Successors, Love? Besides the fact that they’re horrible abominations?” He leans close, “Because they’re weak.”

He slowly walks to the side and buttons up his shirt again, the shard of Shrignold’s (please, please, keep it together, Doris) soul returning back to him and disappearing. Love makes a small desperate sound. “They are raised. They are taught, and you know that being taught can give you a specific line of thinking. That this is good and this is bad, as opposed to just seeing everything and drawing judgment. They’re utter saps because they are cared for, Love.

“But we? Well, we – we’re strong. We’re not biased. All of that mushy feelings you gush for your copies don’t have any space in our hearts and that makes us stand firm in who we are. We are supreme.”

“Because you don’t feel?” Doris grits out, “Because you are deprived of someone to guide you? Because you look to the factory-set rulebook inside your head and think, this is all there is and will be and I will decide what the rest of what I see in the world is? Is that it, Pride?” she shakes her head, “I feel so sorry for you sometimes.”

Pride frowns, “And I pity you. You walking little storms of emotion. Do you know how much you’ve destroyed, Love? In fact, you’ll probably be given a sanction once the council finds out about your little rampage on Earth and in here. What I’m doing – to bring your child back and cover up for you – is helping.”

Doris’ free hand curls and uncurls. Lust shouts, “Don’t listen to him!”

“It’s her decision,” Pride shouts back, “Don’t interfere, you little whore.”

Lust’s eyes narrow, “I’ll make you choke on your blood.”

He snorts. Then he turns back to Doris. The way he tries to make his eyes seem kind disgusts her.

“So, what’ll it be?”

If he dies, Shrignold dies.

If she says no, she’ll be punished and never see her boy again.

_I’m so sorry, Shrignold. You don’t deserve this, you don’t –_

Doris raises her head.

Pride grins.

*

He doesn’t get a lot of visitors, not since he’s been thrown out and told never to come back unless he was summoned or cordially invited to some party or so. Even then, he never really shows up. He’s left the loom with them, so they can play with the fabric of Space and Time. Space is probably watching over it since she has nothing better to do. Him existing means that he’s already doing his job of making sure time goes by as it’s supposed to.

Still, it’s a good deal. He turns the hourglass over and watches as the golden sand starts to move to the bottom half.

Tony clicks his tongue, “Where is it?”

Pride opens his palm and shows him a small glowing orb. A small glass shatter of a soul.

The embodiment of time takes it in his hands and frowns. “It’s been tampered with,” he narrows his eyes, “Not even just taken apart and merged again, it’s been modified.”

Pride shrugs, “Things happened and we needed to salvage it, so we might have had to put in a few…adjustments.”

He sets his jaw. This was a Successor’s soul. The loom from which they were born out of was something made by him, of course he was familiar with how they were supposed to feel.

Souls like these were woven tight and precise. Tony was not someone to mess up with his work. For it to be _tampered_ with. That was something that just…got on his nerves. The violation of a soul, a soul _he helped make_ , was a stab at him too.

Pride’s jaw being broken is currently on his to-do list.

For now, he’s got a deal and he needs to hold up his end of the bargain. Besides, this little soul needed to be fixed, and since he helped make it, he was going to help restore it.

Tony wonders how many stabs it would take to kill Pride.

*

True enough, she doesn’t get in trouble. The entire fiasco is forgotten. Pride easily makes excuses for the disaster in their home and although the Voices are planning to investigate it, they’ve got nothing to go on.

No one’s dead, Azrael’s blade is returned and Doris is…well…she’s powerless. Completely stripped of everything. She can’t feel the life of the earth in her veins and the warmth of her wings on her back. How could she have done anything, right?

Lust is crying when she leaves.

She consoles herself in the fact that her son is alive. Her being human meant that Shrignold was alive. Alive and well.

She did it. Her son was as safe as he could be.

Doris tells herself that him not remembering her was for his own safety. After all, she was a failure of a mother. If he went back to her again, she was going to get him killed again.

*

 _He_ is Love.

He is born out of starlight and he is born knowing who he is. He is the personification of Love. Always has been, always will be.

If he gets flashes of muddled laughter and a woman who looked like him, who said _pash_ lovingly and the echoes of lullaby he didn’t recognize, that was his imagination.

It’s funny how he doesn’t really get what he’s supposed to do, though. What was Love, really? The others said that it took time to understand what they represented and they needed time to look for that understanding.

Somehow, he knows that Love is acceptance. He knows that there is interaction and he knows that there is also change.

(In the back of his head, he knows that there are tears and the repeated apology, but that’s just his imagination too.)

If he catches himself trying to look for someone to ask them (he could have sworn there was someone), he brushes it off. He’s alone and he has to do this alone.

His name is Shrignold and he is Love.

* * *

 

_The best stories are love stories. For God so loved the world, for Romeo so loved Juliet, for a master so loved a pet. It doesn’t have to be romantic. There are different kinds of love. People don’t recognize it, but the story of a friend’s sacrifice for another is a story of love. The story of how a dog waits for a master that will never come home is a story of love._

_For a mother so loved her son…_

 


End file.
